


Moi Aussi

by ArkadyFlowers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Greg's kids are precocious and cute, M/M, stepdad!mycroft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArkadyFlowers/pseuds/ArkadyFlowers
Summary: Oneshot. In which John does not speak French, Sherlock is irritating, neither Holmes especially wants to visit Mummy, and the Civil Service abbreviates everything under the sun.(Don't even ask me where this fits in. Put it anywhere your own headcanon desires, though probably pre-S4. Established Mystrade; Johnlock if you squint, or easily gen-able if you prefer.)





	

John Watson had been staring at his phone for the past four and a half minutes solid, and it was starting to get boring. Even more boring than being stuck in Mycroft’s kitchen (the recent addition of a kitchen table to the same had made it only marginally less depressing) because _somebody_ had acquired _responsibilities._

“What are you looking at?” Sherlock inquired, deliberately not looking up from his own phone. (Of course it was different when _John_ was doing it.)

“Jet,” the doctor said mildly, eyes flickering up for just a second before he looked back to the screen. “It’s called black amber, but it’s actually driftwood. People who are into crystal healing say it’s protective against ‘all negative energies and psychic attacks’. Weird.”

“Jet?”

“Yeah.” He paused a second, then read on, frowning. “...‘also has energies making it protective to finance and business and brings stability to these realms’. I mean, I know he’s probably got a finger or two in the economy but-- crystal healing? Really?”

Sherlock’s confusion was entirely genuine, and came with a generous side order of perturbed. “What _are_ you talking ab-- Isab _ella_!”

The shout actually startled John into putting his phone down on the three-month-old kitchen table and looking up properly. “Hey, whoa, are we _sure_ coffee is allowed?”

Nine years old going on thirty, Isabella Lestrade cocked an eyebrow up at him and cranked the handle of the coffee machine expertly, catching Sherlock in the arm with her tiny, pointy elbow for the second time. John was not completely convinced that wasn’t deliberate. “It’s for Myc.”

Sherlock tried, not hard enough, to hide a faintly amused smile. The fact Lestrade’s offspring -- to all intents and purposes his own step-niece and nephew, now, since the advent of the kitchen table and all the other accoutrements of _moving in_ \-- got to call his brother by the diminutive form of his name would never cease to be amusing.

“Right.” John sighed. “Isabella, how about you let Sherlock do that?”

Sherlock shot him a Look.

“How about you let _me_ do that?”

Isabella shrugged. “You won’t do it how he likes it.”

“And you can?” Sometimes, John was sure, Sherlock really just couldn’t help himself.

Isabella nodded seriously, but did stand aside and let John in to make a valiant attempt at figuring out a coffee machine which would look more at home behind the counter of a Starbucks.

“So. Why jet?”

John grunted at the coffee machine and jerked a nod back to the kitchen table. “Mycroft’s phone. Check the notification.”

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow, but swept across the kitchen in a couple of long steps and tapped the screen on. “Lestrade, of course.”

“Mmhm. I like how he’s got a little wine glass after the name, though. Didn’t think Mycroft knew what emoticons were.”

“That was me,” Isabella put in helpfully, by now carefully pouring herself and her younger brother tall glasses of organic orange juice.

John thought _Do we need to talk about how much your dad and stepdad drink_ was probably not a wise conversation to have with a precocious nine-year-old. (Probably just a bottle shared over dinner, anyway.) Sherlock thought it fascinating and potentially very useful that Isabella had, on at least one prior occasion, apparently had unfettered access to Mycroft’s personal mobile.

“Just one word,” Sherlock said. His tone was almost _musing_ , but there was a hint of _amused_ in there that John didn’t quite like. “Jet.”

“Yeah. So. Why jet?”

“Timestamp says three minutes after Gavin--”

“Gregory!”

“-- _thank you_ , Isabella-- disappeared in a rush which I _hope_ , but somehow doubt, is going to make my day interesting.”

“Uh huh-- you _bu_ -egger!” The coffee machine was not cooperating. _You bugger yer arse_ was another conversation not to be had with nine year olds in the room.

“Winning?”

It was never good when Sherlock paid attention to mundanities like uncooperative coffee machines. “Yep,” John said, too casually and he knew it. “Yep, all fine, doing fine here.”

“Can I suggest turning that dial the other way?”

“You can, if you-- oh. Right. How-- never mind. Jet. What’s with the jet?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No significance of which I am aware… did you spot the spacing, though? It’s J-E, space, T, apostrophe.”

“Well, that just makes it weirder. Hey, Isabella, is your dad especially into jet? Particularly fond of Whitby?”

Isabella shrugged. “What’s Whitby?”

“It’s a place, it’s… never mind.”

“Maybe it’s jet like rockets. Oscar’s into rocket ships at the minute.”

“Oscar is _six_ . Of course he is,” Sherlock said dismissively. He frowned for another moment, during which John bit down a further three curses directed towards the coffee machine, then looked up with a rather wolfish grin. “ _Oh_.”

“Oh?”

“ _Ohhh_.”

John very nearly dropped the coffee mug he’d retrieved from the cupboard at the answering, “Oh?”

“Mycroft! Hi. Morning. Uh--”

“Sherlock, put my phone _down_ . Doctor Watson, _please_ step away from the coffee machine, for all our sakes. Isabella, your brother is in dire need of assistance in finding Laika; could you perhaps be so kind as to run up and help him?”

Isabella nodded and scurried off, leaving John facing both Holmes, both staring at him. Both had a flicker of faint amusement he wasn’t sure he liked.

“Who’s Laika?” he asked, very aware that was the least intelligent question he could come up with.

“A stuffed dog toy,” Mycroft informed him, as if this was the most normal thing in the world, nudging him out of the way and tutting at the coffee machine. “What have you--” _peep, peep_ from the mobile on the kitchen table “--done to this-- read that out, please, Sherlock.”

“You just told me to put it down.”

“You can read the notification without touching it.”

Sherlock sniffed. “10-98 B-M. T-T-Y-L.” He paused, then perked up a little. “Mycroft?”

“ _Sherlock. No_.”

John didn’t even bother with the ‘what’, well aware that he couldn’t _breathe_ in a room with both Holmes without bringing the average IQ down fifty points.

“10-98 is an escaped prisoner,” Sherlock translated obligingly. “Is BM Belmarsh, brother mine? Oh, do tell me BM is Belmarsh.”

“Absolutely not, Sherlock, you are not--”

John dared close his eyes for a long second, smart enough to work out where this was going.

“Belmarsh is one of six high-security prisons in the United Kingdom. If Lestrade is on the case it’s likely to be one of his murderers-- and the most likely candidate for escape is-- oh, Mycroft, you know what this means?”

“It means _he_ is going to follow us down to our parents’ house _later_ and _you_ are absolutely _not_ \--”

“ _Mycroft!_ ”

“ _No excuses, Sherlock!_ ”

“Do you, erm…” John paused. “Do you want me to take over on the coffee, there?”

“ _You’ve done enough_.”

“Right. Right, yes, okay then.”

“Mycroft?” Sherlock ventured after another moment.

“What?”

John had done French at school, enough to recognise the language, but he couldn’t follow the brief exchange that followed. Somehow, he was fairly sure it raised a very faint blush out of the elder Holmes.

“You are _not_ getting out of visiting our parents, Sherlock.” Steam hissed out of a small metal arm on the coffee machine which had previously seemed innocuous and was now officially on the list of things John was pretty sure either Holmes could kill someone with if he so chose.

“Here, I can do that. You two can talk. In French, if you want-- Sherlock, what are you smirking about?”

“Jet,” Sherlock said simply.

John had never actually seen Mycroft Holmes go pale before, even in all the hells of things they’d tacitly been through together.

“Sherlock-- you didn’t.”

“John did.”

“ _Doctor_ Watson!”

“What?” John shrugged, palms up, all innocence. “I don’t _get_ it. Jet. Jet’s cool. Probably good on you. Can’t say I’d recommend citrine.”

Sherlock unashamedly snickered.

“Okay, look. Is someone going to tell me what’s going on here?”

“It’s not _jet_ , John.” Sherlock took pity at last, the bugger. “It’s _je t’aime_. _Gareth_ is half-French and my _brother_ there is a civil servant, a profession famous for initialising or abbreviating even the most straightforward of concepts.”

“I hardly think...” Mycroft began, but Sherlock cut him off with a look.

“I have heard you manage entire conversations with fewer than a dozen full words in them.”

“He’s right,” John put in helpfully. “I mean, nobody can even keep the departments straight. GCHQ and DEFRA and HMRC and the DfE and all the rest.”

“GCHQ and... DEFRA,” Mycroft repeated slowly, blinking at him. “Well. At least you have… eclectic interests, Doctor Watson.”

“What’s DEFRA again?”

“The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.”

“Mycroft’s _favourite_.” Sherlock sounded altogether far too amused.

“Shut _up_ , brother dear.”

Sometimes conversational retreat was the better part of valour in these situations. “So… jet is short for je t’aime? Which is…?”

Sherlock’s smirk was reaching Cheshire Cat levels. “I _love_ you.”

“Shut _up_ , Sherlock!”

“Enough, the pair of you!” John snapped. “Mycroft, coffee. Sherlock, are we ready to go or--?”

“You tell me. _You_ packed.”

“Right. We’re ready. As soon as Oscar finds, what was its name again, Laika…”

“I’d rather go to Belmarsh--”

“You are _not_ going to Belmarsh, Sherlock!” Mycroft snapped, swiping up his phone in passing en route to the hallway. Following in his wake, John just caught a glimpse of the reply text -- [ _Pdp. M a_.] -- before the kitchen door slammed unceremoniously in his face and he heard an impressive bellow up the stairs: “Isabella! Oscar! This is your five-minute call, if you please!”

“Coming!” returned a pair of young voices from somewhere in the endless depths of upstairs.

“He’s not bad at this,” John said. In response to Sherlock’s blank and possibly rather disinterested look, he clarified further, “The parenting thing. Not as bad as I thought he’d be.”

“Not as bad as _he_ thought,” Sherlock said mildly, which John thought might be the kindest thing he’d said yet about his brother’s common-law-marital circumstances.

 

*

 

It was two hours (and about seventy-three ‘are we nearly there yet’s) and a toilet break at an unassuming service station before John managed to get Sherlock alone for long enough to ask. “Okay, you got _je t’_. What do you make of ‘ _PDP, MA’_? Uppercase ‘p’, lowercase ‘dp’, fullstop; uppercase ‘M’, space, ‘a’?”

Sherlock considered for a moment, head tilted to one side, looking almost like he was studying a Burger King menu. “French. _Pas de problème. Moi aussi_.”

“No problem,” John guessed. “On the TTYL, talk to you later, ‘sure, no worries, it’ll be okay’. But _moi aussi_?”

Sherlock’s eyes drifted to his brother, six-year-old on one side with hands clasped together for Oscar’s safety, the little boy’s other arm wrapped around a fluffy stuffed collie dog half his own height, eyes upturned to his stepfather, rabbiting on excitedly about something while Isabella, no more than five feet away, studiously perused the teens’ section of the bookshelves in the little services’ WH Smith before turning to find her bank manager with something cloudy blue and half an inch thick clutched in both hands. She thrust it at him with a beaming smile, and Mycroft rolled his eyes and crouched down to her level to explain in terms both firm and entirely lacking condescension that while it was an admirable choice, she really ought to understand just what she was getting into, at her age, with _The Fault in Our Stars_. Sherlock knew that look. It meant _not a chance in hell, kid_ , but there was a softness on its edges he hadn’t seen -- or hadn’t wanted to see -- before.

“In answer to _je t’_ , John,” he said softly. “It means _me too_.”


End file.
